Pro-Imaging

Weymouth and Portland Photo Competition 2008 ends 11 November 2008 

The Rules of this Contest

Listed below are extracts from the rules of this competition. These extracts detail the rights being claimed from entrants.

"10. The Tourism Unit reserves the right not to award any or all of the prizes. Details of the winners will be posted on the Unit’s website www.visitweymouth.co.uk. The Judges decision is final and no correspondence before or after the competition is permitted. Winning entrants are permitted to enter the competition again.

13. Copyright of entered images will rest with the photographer. Entry into the Competition however will permit unrestricted use of the photos by Condor Ferries and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council and its agencies for any purpose (for example in publicity material). Images will, where possible, carry the photographer’s credit. WPBC and Condor Ferries reserve the right to reproduce, enlarge, publish or exhibit, mechanically or electronically the entries from the competition for use."

Results of Testing the Rules

Listed below are the results of the tests we carried out on this competition's rules. The tests are all based on the standards set out in The Bill of Rights. By adopting these standards competition organisers can create competition rules that meet the needs of organisers and are fair and respectful to the rights of entrants. For each test a result is given which can be Pass of Fail. Competitions that pass all these tests go on The Rights On List, those that don't go on The Rights Off List.

If the rules are vague and we cannot determine whether the rules pass a particular test or not the result is shown as Unclear.  Where a test is not necessary the result is shown as N/A.

Click on any result below for more information about that specific test.

1 Copyright & Moral Rights 

• Pass, All photographers entering the contest retain their copyright
• Pass, The contest does not require any entrants to waive moral rights
• Fail, Rules state a credit is always given to the photographer when the image is published
  
• Pass, All the documents that must be completed by each entrant to participate in or win a contest are shown
  

2 Free Usage Durations Claimed

• Fail, The organisers free usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
  
• Fail, The sponsors free usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
• N/A, Book usage is time limited as per The Bill of Rights
  
• Fail, free usage only promotes the contest or is used for a book 

3 Commercial Usage Rights Claimed

• Pass, A statement clarifying the commercial usage position is present as per The Bill of Rights
• Fail, Commercial usage is rights managed & time limited as per The Bill of Rights
• Pass, Entrants are not required to sign commercial usage licenses

4 Declarations

• Pass, The organisations that acquire rights are all named
• Fail, This (or last) years Judges are named along with brief bio details

5 Contest End Date

• Pass, The contest end date is within 16 months of the contest being announced

Conclusions

This contest fails The Bill of Rights because -

If you submit an image to this contest, although you can continue to license your image non-exclusively, you will lose forever the right to exclusively license your image. However, "Condor Ferries and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council and its agencies" have gained the right to use all submitted images for ever in any medium they choose.

This contest is harvesting images and the rights to freely use them for ever, including commercial use. The creators whose skill and imagination created the images are not paid a license fee for such usage and this is akin to asking for goods and services to be supplied without payment. We are surprised that a United Kingdom local council, Weymouth & Portland, supported by public funds, £46M in 2007, should be organising a contest with such unfair rules, rules that remove from entrants rights freely conferred on them by the UK Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

We are used to seeing commercial entities adopting such practices, but to see them adopted by a United Kingdom local government organisation, part of whose remit is to ensure the law of the land is respected, is completely unacceptable.

This competition is not recommended. Enter a contest on the The Rights On List instead.

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Weymouth & Portland Response

We made a copy of the above report available to the Mayor of Weymouth & Portland council on the 12th of August 2008. In our email to Mr Munro we said we would be happy to correct anything in the report that was incorrect. We also said that we planned to publish the report on the 18th August, but if Weymouth & Portland council wished to adjust or clarify the rules to let us know and we would delay the report for a reasonable period while the changes were made.

Receipt of our email was acknowledged by the Mayor. Subsequently no further communications were received from anyone within Weymouth & Portland council.

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Organisations - Weymouth and Portland Council, Condor Ferries

Judges - Details of judges are not given.

Contact - Send enquiries about this contest to Tim Munro the Mayor - This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , to the Arts Development Officer for the Burough - This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , to the Board of the South West Regional Development Agency - This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , and to Condor Ferries at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

© 2008 Pro-Imaging; Last updated on 12 August 2008

The above text may be reproduced providing the Pro-Imaging copyright notice is displayed with a link to the Pro-Imaging website.

Text reproduced above in quotes has been extracted from the competition website for the purposes of review in this report.

NB. If the competition rules are changed after updated date shown above it is the competition organisers responsibility to notify Pro-Imaging of changes made.